The License
by 347-Flavors
Summary: Oneshot, Austria/Hungary.  In the wake of the Great War, husband and wife look towards their future.


A/N: The first portion of this story is set in the aftermath of WWI, but it continues on into WWII and beyond.

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><p>She sat on a rather hard cot, trying halfheartedly to avoid the dingy stains that riddled the faint ivory sheets. Her hair, once long and gleaming on their wedding day, was tangled and shorn in a messy cut that looked as if a saber had sliced through the locks directly above her shoulders. Probable. Her eyes downcast, he could see the cuts and bruises that covered her dirty cheeks. Bandages covered her arms, which were folded in her lap at an awkward angle. Her fingers twitched as she heard his bleak footsteps in the doorway, forcing the trigger of a phantom weapon put in her hands by instinct. She caught herself and quickly waved away mental images of combat, embarrassed and somewhat ashamed by the nervous tick.<p>

"Roderich?"

She lifted her gaze to his pale face and met his sunken eyes.

"Elizaveta, I... I came to see you. My dear, we..."

A sharp inhale. He struggled with his words, never much of an orator.

"We need to talk."

"Yes, Roderich, I know."

"But first I want you to know that I love you. I want you to know that I am prepared to do anything for you, Elizaveta. Anything. And I want you to know that you are the love of my life, and - "

"Roderich," she sharply cut him off, "we don't need all of this. Just ask me what you came to ask."

She turned her eyes down again and he nodded.

"Have you finished your conference with Arthur and the like?"

"Yes. It was him, Francis, Alfred Jones, and," it was here that her previously mechanical voice shattered into the realm of emotion, "and Feliciano."

They had all been sore about the Vargas brothers' sudden shift of alliance. It had Ludwig sulking for weeks. But the betrayal struck Elizaveta the hardest. Her little Feli. Her Ita-chan. But she consecrated those miseries to the rattle of machine gun rounds. Now that the firing had stopped, she could hear the phrases again.

But there was something much bigger on the line.

"And? It went well, right?"

"No, Roderich, it did not. We..."

A tear slid down her face, no doubt stinging into her cuts, but she was determined to keep up at least the facade of resolve.

"We need to have a divorce..."

She lifted her trembling white hand. Her left hand. The ornate silver wedding band that had graced her finger was gone, replaced by a linen bandage. She shifted under his perturbed stare.

"They took it. Arthur said the inlaid pearl would be worth a small fortune. I tried to stop him, but...," she grimaced, "he tore off the ring and broke the joint."

Another small tear escaped her eye, followed by another three or four. Roderich came to her, held her to his chest, and fingered her jagged hair. He hoped it would grow back.

"We don't need to divorce, Elizaveta, we can stop them from that at least. This is something they don't have power over, Elizaveta, not over us, not over our marriage!"

"Roderich, you don't understand. You seem to have forgotten why you married me in the first place," a bitter twinge, "for politics."

"That wasn't -"

"We aren't having this conversation now, Roderich. Not today. Not right now. Please, just hear me out."

"Of course..."

She wriggled out from his embrace, trying to meet his eyes. They were both crying now.

"They said we needed a divorce. What can I do, Roderich? What can we do? Fight it? Oppose their will? Think, if they don't get what they want from us, then won't they heap more torture on poor Ludwig? He's already practically become that French bastard's slave. If we refuse on our terms, won't the do something horrible to him?"

It made sense to him, sure, but he couldn't see why Elizaveta was giving up so easily. This was not his wife, not the girl he fell in love with. That Elizaveta would never give in. She was exhausted by war and frayed with trauma. Looking at her closely, he could see that the soiled brown uniform she wore now hung off of her. He could could only imagine how thin she must have become. The crackles of fear behind the seemingly impenetrable screen of spunk in her eyes flashed brighter and brighter. And yet, there seemed something more to the fear than just shell shock, as others called it.

"And I thought...well, I still think, that maybe...some time on my own wouldn't be so bad, Roderich. I think a little independence might be good for me. It's helping Feliks. Maybe I could grow a little myself, Roderich, just as a nation?"

"Is this what you really want, Elizaveta...?"

He felt betrayed. Just as he had when Feliciano and Lovino had deserted, just as he had when Vash had left him long ago. He wanted to lash out at her, wrest her bony wrists in a vice-grip and never let her leave him. These were the urges he had felt towards her as an imperialist young man. But he buried those dark impulses.

"Roderich. It is..."

He tried to look after her in the years that came. He flinched away the nights he spent in Ludwig's home, the nights he would hear her cries.

"Roderich! Roderich! Help!"

But he could not turn on Ludwig. Not his ally. Not for the woman who had deserted him in 1917.

And in the years after that, when Ludwig's fit of madness had subsided and all was mostly forgiven, he tried. But Ivan was too frightening, too powerful for him to take on. How could he be expected to do anything for her, even as the Iron Curtain suffocated her, even as Ivan delighted in her agony.

1917 was years away, he told himself, decades. It could not be out of bitterness, could not be out of anger or spite that he did not help her.

But the shadow of the Great War hung over him nonetheless, and as her shrieks dwindled into whimpers, they could not pierce the great fog of 1917.


End file.
